Mega Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover - DIY!

Thanks for the input Santa Monica. I did see that while looking however it was too cost prohibitive. These lights are going to be less than 2 inches away from the scrubber so they might be adequet they might not be. Like you said it is an experiment but until somebody tries it, no body will know right? I will keep you posted on my results.

Brian
 
After 5 days. I algae growing on my screen. at day 3 my tank got a little cloudy..day 4 super cloudy. I didn't know why until the end of day 4. After putting in my 50 micron filter pad..and checking it after 3 hours it was chocked with brown junk..hmm the same color as the brown algae in my tank. so I rinsed the filter every couple hours till day 5 and things are getting nice and clear. I can see the brown algae in my tank is greatly reduced already..I suspect the dead algae was the clouding agent.
 
Day 6 The green algae really just started filling in. I also got a bit of a nitrite/nitrate spike. I had to take my HOB filter off line to get this running. I suspected and was ready for that.
Nitrite .50
Nitrate 40

Did 10% water change.

Day 7 First screen cleaning. I cleaned off the brown stuff with a sprayer hose in the sink. and left most of the green since it just started filling in on day 6 there wasn't much of it.
Nitrite .25
Nitrate 30
 
Day 8

Nitrite= less than .25=(not quite zero tho)
Nitrate= 30

I have two screens(both doubled up). One is #7 plastic canvas and the 2nd is #10(finer) plastic
It seems to me #7 is surely superior as screen 2 is growing much more slowly.
 
I'm finding unless I leave at least a small portion of the flow over a filter my tank gets very clowdy. Any advice on that? on the other hand I just had a run in and elimination of y first buble algea I picked up with some LR. easy enough..remove it from the tank. remove it carefully wash it off and put it back.
 
With out getting into details of the modification of the HOB to overflow. I can keep or remove the function where the water flows over into the tank thus passing thru any floss I have in there. I've been finding that when I don't have any floss in there my water gets pretty cloudy. Maybe that is a temporary thing as the algae dies off.

I am happy to report that all algae from the sand and glass is GONE! some on the rocks yet but I understand the phosphate rock leech thing is probably the reason.
 
Cloudiness is usually caused by dead algae. Either someone wait too long to clean their screen, or, algae is letting go from the screen and floating around and dying in the water. Check for any bald spots on the screen... that would be algae letting go. And next cleaning... clean it all the way to the plastic, to remove any dead parts.
 
Update: Cleaning algae off of the rocks.

If you are running a scrubber to help remove algae from the display, try first running the scrubber without manually removing algae off of the rocks. This is because when you scrub algae off of the rocks (or if you put a lawnmower or similar in) while the rocks are still in the tank, the algae will float around and die, causing a nutrient spike. It's better to let the scrubber slowly remove the algae for you. This will prevent spikes, and is less work too.

However, if there are LOTS of algae in the display (so much so that the phosphate and nitrate tests are zero), then your scrubber may not easily compete, even after many weeks. So if after four weeks you don't notice a reduction in algae in the display, then slowly start removing algae manually from the display (or, add a small algae eater). Don't remove TOO much algae at once (or don't get TOO big of an algae eater) because that will generate a spike too. Once the algae in the display has been reduced some, your scrubber should be able to take over from there, and all the rest of the nuisance algae should slowly go away.

Note: This does not apply if you remove the rocks from the system before cleaning. Removing rocks can be done at any time, but is much more work.
 
Day 14

Things are coming along swimmingly:shock:

Small modifications to the scrubber over the weeks. I removed the nozzle from the pump return to the tank. This really increased my flow rate, I had to make massive adjustment to my overflow gate. I was very happy with this and my screens have a super flow now(was good before IMO). I put in reflectors on each bulb, I was on shoe string budget before so I ended up skipping them in the end and going with the cheaper non-spot light CFL's. I also had to add a fan to the top of the unit because the 4 23wat CFLs overheated my water since the unit is fully covered. No big deal stole a 120mm fan from an old PC power supply and wired it into a old walwart 7.5v power supply and it turns on when the lights turn on. Initially I had it on full time my heater had trouble keeping up then.

Ammonia = 0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 20

Screens are filling in better but not even half full. I've had the filter pad out of the system for awhile now and things are clear. The cloudiness was not from the lack of properly cleaning the screen. if anything I cleaned them too well. It was from all the brown algae in the tank that all let go rapidly IMO.

I know i've stocked my tank quickly. Sorry not able to control myself. however things are kept under close watch and things are doing well.

Tank born nov 1st 2009.

Two PJ cardinals 1.5"
one false clown 2"
one fire fish 2"
one yellow tail damsel(on close watch) 1"
tiger watchman gobi 4"
two coral banded shrimp.
 
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